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Tag Archives: book club

For the first quarter of the year, I’ve been exploring how to start book clubs in our school in a variety of ways. I hoped that by offering a variety of ways to engage with a book, that we would support many different interests, availabilities, and format preferences. Our book for quarter 1 was The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall. I offered 2 main ways of participating in our quarter 1 book club: 1 was reading the book during a lunch book club with me and another was a family book club where students and families read the book together.

For both book clubs, I created a shared Flipgrid where readers could leave thoughts, questions, favorite parts, etc for various segments of the book.

My lunch book club met every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to chat about the book as well as listen to me read aloud. Then, they would continue a set number of pages before we met again. The students enjoyed this time out of the noisy lunchroom. We got to know one another better through our discussion of the hard topics of the book, and we had many laughs and sad moments as read aloud. Many students read way ahead in the book because they were so excited and eager to know what happened, but they continued to come and listen to me re-read the parts they had already read and continued to contribute to the conversations.

Nine other elementary schools in our district also read the book. We decided that at the end of our school-level book clubs, we would use Skype and Google Hangouts to connect our schools together across the district so that our students could talk to one another. My students connected with Angie Pendley’s students at Gaines Elementary. We used Google Hangouts and a set of slides to guide our conversations. Students took turns at each school stepping up to the camera and sharing their thoughts about the questions. It was fun to hear from students in another school and see a different perspective on the book as well as many connections to what we experienced when we read.

The family book club read at home on their own and we held one face-to-face meeting at the end of the book. We had about 21 families reading the book, so I hoped to have a large group discussion.

However, due to many schedule conflicts, we had a very small group. Even though it was a small group, it was a mighty discussion. We chatted as we gathered and shared some snacks. The author, Shelley Pearsall, offered to connect with us for a few minutes over Skype, so we took time to connect with her and ask some questions about the book. We learned how the title of the book started out as “Metallic”, but the publisher changed it to the title we see today. We learned about the research that Shelley Pearsall put into the book to match the 60’s time period as well as learn some facts about the life of James Hampton and his art piece.

Some of our families asked about the other characters in the book and how their stories came about. We even got to see a brainstorming page that Shelley Pearsall used to map out the 7 things and their connections to Arthur and the story.

After our Skype, we used the same questions that our lunch book club used to have a rich discussion. I loved hearing parents and children talking together on equal ground and sharing their wonderings, excitement, and sadness from the book. I definitely want to build upon what we experienced because it was a wonderful first experience that I would love to see more people be a part of.

For quarter 2, I’m trying to build upon our book clubs. With the help of 2 UGA students, I am continuing the 4th grade lunch book club and adding on a 5th grade group. I’m also expanding he family book club to included more grade levels in the hope that more people will be able to attend our in-person event. This time we are using 3 different books instead of the same one. As always, it’s a work in progress, but our reading community is growing. One of the things I loved hearing from some of the parents is how excited they were to read together as a family. I also had family members tell me they had never been a part of a book club and they were excited to finally try one out.

Over the summer, a group of librarians in Clarke County began brainstorming a quarterly book club at our schools using some of the Georgia Book Award nominees. Our hope was to have in-person book clubs at our schools but also to connect our elementary schools virtually through Flipgrid and Google Hangouts/Skype. We selected 4 of the 20 books on the book award list based on a variety of themes and interests.

We also invited other elementary schools to join us and we now have at least 10 of the CCSD elementary schools reading and connecting about the same books.

At school, I have a group of 10 fourth graders who meet during lunch to read the first quarter selection: The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall. During lunch, I read aloud while they eat and follow along. We pause along the way to chat and also make an agreement about what page we will all read to before the next meeting. I also made a Flipgrid where we can chat about collections of chapters during the times we aren’t meeting as well as hear thoughts from other schools reading the book too.

Because there’s so much interest in the book, I wanted to extend the opportunity to read the book to our families. Through a Donors Choose project, I secured additional copies of each quarter’s book. I’m sending home a form to invite families to sign up to read The Seventh Most Important Thing. By signing up, they agree to read the book, add to our Flipgrid, and attend an in-person book club on October 19th after school where families can sit together and chat about the book as well as read aloud favorite parts.

I can’t wait to see the discussions we have around this book and future book club selections. I can’t wait to see how families come together around the same book. This is a new piece of building our reading community, and we’re expecting the miraculous as we go.

If you are a Barrow family who wants to participate, download the form above or look in your Monday folder.

If you are someone also reading The Seventh Most Important Thing, please feel free to add to our conversation on Flipgrid. https://flipgrid.com/sevenththing

This year, I’m really trying to think of ways to support students’ reading lives. Recently, Ms. Hicks, 3rd grade collaborator, came to me with an idea. She wondered if I would meet with small groups of students in 3rd grade who needed some suggestions of books to read. These students are all readers but some might be stuck in their reading, abandon many of the books they choose, need a nudge to try something new, etc.

When I recommend books in the library, it’s always a very informal process. I ask what students like, what they’ve read, what they are hoping to find, etc, but I’ve never formally made a list of questions to pull from. I started thinking about Will Walton at Avid Bookshop and how he manages the Avid book subscription program. In this program, someone buys a 6 or 12-month subscription and the recipient gets a new book in the mail specifically tailored to the recipient’s interests. I sent Will a message to see if he had a formal process and learned that he just loves to talk and chats with the person all about things they love. His questions aren’t always specific to reading, so it really got me thinking about quirky questions that I might ask to students that would help me connect them to a book.

I initially started making a list on my own, but then I sent the Google doc to all of the media specialists in our district as well as posted to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

There were many suggestions about book related questions but some interesting thoughts started to emerge. Our list started to grow. (Feel free to add to this document!)

What do you like to do after school?

What are some of your favorite movies or television shows?

What are some of your hobbies?

What is a book that you couldn’t stand to read? What was it about that book that you didn’t like?

What kind of music do you listen to?

Where do you like to eat?

What kind of games do you enjoy playing?

Would you rather fly a kite (sit by a river, etc.) on a nice day or go to a big party?

Who is your favorite superhero?

Do you have a favorite series? Genre?

Do you like “just the facts” or “a far out story”?

What are 3 books you’ve read that you loved?

Do you like realistic stuff or imaginary stuff?

Why do you read (to escape, entertainment, learn new things)?

What is your preferred length of book? (short & sweet, long & detailed, depends on the book)

If you could visit any place or time in history, where would you go?

Is there anything you would avoid when choosing a book? (bad language, violence, ghosts, death, etc)

When you come to the library, where you usually go first when looking for your next book?

If you could be someone else for a day, who would it be and why?

Who are some of your favorite celebrities?

What is your favorite subject in school?

Then, I took those questions and turned them into a Google form to use with students.

I decided that if 6-8 students came at a time, I could have them start filling out the form while I started having 1-on-1 conversations with them. We settled on a 30 minute session for this survey process. I took over the typing as I talked with them and added to what they had already written or finished the questions they hadn’t gotten to.

I was actually amazed by some of the responses that I got from students and the insight it gave me into ways I might connect them to a book. Some snippets of responses included:

If you could be someone else for a day, who would it be and why?

Mal from Descendants because she’s pretty and has purple hair. I like what she wears.

a wolf to howl at the moon

a cheetah because I want to run fast

Is there anything you would avoid when choosing a book? (bad language, violence, ghosts, death, etc)

This helped me walk around the library and pull books into stacks for each student for a second trip to the library. The purpose of the second 30-minute segment was to look at the stack of books that were chosen specifically for each student and really spend some time with them. Students were so eager to get their hands on their stacks that they started asking me for a sneak peek before it was even time. My fear was that students wouldn’t connect with any book, but once again the miraculous happened.

Each student had a strategy. Some spread all the books out and looked at the covers. Some started reading one book and didn’t want to move to another book in the stack. Some flipped over and read the back of each book. Some read the beginning page of each book. What happened is that every student found more than one book in their stack of 7-8 books that they wanted to read and they were genuinely excited about their choices.

We decided that each student would choose the “first read” from the pile and we would create a list of all of the other titles so that we didn’t forget about the “future reads”. For all of the books that weren’t chosen, we just pushed them aside in a big stack. Something else miraculous happened. Students who were coming into the library to check out books saw all of my small group looking at that pile of books and they wanted to check something out from the pile. Several students who always have trouble finding something actually picked something from the pile of leftover books from the small group.

This gave me a lot to think about in terms of how to support various readers. This was a very personalized experience. It was time consuming on my part, but it was a way that I connected with students that’s hard to do when they are rushing in and out to get a book while I’m teaching a class. I won’t to continue to explore this and see how it can be fine tuned.

Our next step is for students to read their books during “read to self” time in the classroom and we will meet again to chat about the books. It will be like a book club. We won’t focus on naming the characters, setting, problem, solution, etc. Instead we’ll talk about connections we had to the characters, what surprised us, what made us laugh, what we think will happen next. It will be “real talk” about books rather than just academic talk. I can’t wait to see how this evolves.

If you have a favorite reader’s advisory question, add it to our doc or leave it in the comments.

Last month at the Texas Library Association conference, I had the opportunity to attend a session with multiple authors talking about writing historical fiction. Deborah Wiles was on the panel. I’ve know “Debbie” for several years now. I first heard her at the Decatur Book Festival, and when she spoke, she created a magical presence with her words. When she speaks, she truly breathes story into the air. Hearing her speak and reading the words that she writes on the pages of her books gives me such a connection to her southern spirit and reminds me of growing up in the rural town of Blue Ridge. About five years ago, Deborah Wiles came to Barrow Elementary as my very first author visit. She sang One Wide Sky with PreK-1st grade and had upper grades writing in their imaginary journals. She even led a professional learning session for teachers after school. When, I saw Debbie in Texas she told me that she wanted to stop by and see the new media center, so we setup a time.

Since she was already stopping by, I asked her if she would like to meet our 5th grade battle of the books students since they had read Countdown for their competition. I’m so glad that we decided to do that because today’s visit was simply magical.

While she was stuck in traffic, the 5th graders worked on making her some birthday cards for when she arrived. We also displayed the blackout poetry that we had made using Freedom Summer and Revolution.

When she arrived today, she took a seat in the rocking chair that my dad made and started sharing stories. She let the students talk to her about reading Countdown. The depth of their conversation made me realize how different an author visit can be when the students have not only read the books but also spent extensive time discussing them.

The students talked about the complexity of her plots, the character traits of their favorite characters, and shared specific details of scenes that seemed suspenseful. In fact, some of the scenes that students chose to describe were some of the very scenes that were the most difficult for Deborah Wiles to write.

Next, she showed us lots of pictures of where Countdown came from. The students loved seeing the real places that inspired the story. They also loved seeing how the title and cover art for the book changed and how the editor gave Deborah Wiles feedback on her work.

Before students went back to class, we told her “Happy Birthday” and gave her some cards and artwork. She spent time signing books that students pre-ordered from Avid Bookshop and chatting more with students about books and writing.

While she was signing, we enjoyed birthday cake that she brought for us to enjoy!

Before she left, we spent some time roaming around the school and looking at how much it had changed since the last time she was here. Now, she will go to Avid Bookshop for a signing this afternoon at 4:30.

The students are all very eager to read Revolution, which publishes on May 27th. I gave away 2 ARCs of Revolution today as well as some copies of Countdown. We are so thankful to Deborah Wiles for driving to Athens and spending time with us today. The students could have listened to her for the rest of the day. We can’t wait to see her back in our library soon.